randombirder

A very pleasant day, cold, crisp, and relatively clear, but pretty routine birdwise. The Marshes were very soggy, the north marsh is practically submerged by the rainfall over the last couple of days. Not even wellies were sufficient enough to access the north-east corner. A Chiffchaff was present in horseshoe thicket, and a male Blackcap appeared in scrub along the eastern edge of north marsh. A lone Meadow Pipit sat along the fenceline of the Paddocks with around forty Pied Wagtail there. The Waterworks produced two Water Rail , 12 Teal , 10 Tufted Duck , a pair of Gadwall , and a Sparrowhawk .

I was in a foul mood last week, admittedly I spent much of Friday clearing up the toys that I had unceremoniously thrown out of my pram.  I shouldn't really have these items in my flat anyway as I have no children of my own or anyone else's.  The reason for these histrionics were simple.  A sprinkling of  Desert Wheatear  shaped gold-dust along the eastern coastline, and no efficient means to see them. There are many photographs of the bird that I went to see today at Reculver in Kent scattered like gold-dust all over the interweb, by which I mean, websites dedicated for proliferating news about birds.  And the reasons were strikingly obvious. So today, I took out a second mortgage and headed over to Avis rent-a-car in the centre of Londinium, where it took around four days to complete the paperwork, and another week and a half to negotiate my way out of London.  Thankfully the bird was still present when I arrived. Having mentioned gold-dus...

Pretty quiet around the ressies today with the best sighting (apart from the shuttlecock) a Green Sandpiper flushed from the north-end of Lockwood that flew round and up the relief channel.  Two Skylark later flew over and a Meadow Pipit alighted from the bank. A flock of five Skylark then flew over No.2, but that was about it apart from three Grey Wagtail over No.4, 24 Shoveler on No.5, 22  Gadwall on (15 on East Warwick and a further seven on No.2), four Shelduck (two on No.5, and two on No.3).  A total of ten Skylark were noted during the course of the morning.